The Gate Traveler

I was in no hurry to return to Earth and face Mahya and her head slapping. Instead, we flew until I found a spot almost impossible to reach without flying. The ground below was a twisted mess of rocks and thick roots crisscrossed like a web of natural traps. Dense foliage hung low, hiding any semblance of a trail. The terrain had an irregular slope, with sharp drops hidden in the underbrush, and sudden rises made climbing treacherous. In the center of this natural maze was a meadow with grass, flowers, and two sprawling trees. It was perfect.

Just in case, I placed the poles around the meadow and opened the house. Rue went to investigate the surroundings and somehow passed through the trap maze. I hoped I wouldn’t have to rescue him from some bush.

On the first day, I spent time in my darkroom developing all the pictures I had taken along the way. For the next two weeks, I cooked and experimented with all the ingredients and spices I bought in Lumis. Of course, I also barbequed and smoked a lot of snake meat, making my boy very happy. And I didn’t even have to rescue him from a bush. He jumped over most of them with his size or just barrelled through.

Some of my experiments were inedible, but others were amazing. I baked delicious pies with various fruits, made some interesting stews with snake and local beef meat and vegetables, and other dishes with vegetables. The raak and flimo were still the stars of the show, but I found some other contenders for second place. A small, hard vegetable that looked like an uneven brown stone and could pound nails turned out to be a delicacy when baked. It reminded me of baked garlic with a more delicate flavor and sweet undertones. Rue also appreciated it, even if he wasn’t a vegetable dog. Some vegetables were great fresh in a salad, and took my salads to the next level. The spices were mainly amazing, with some that tasted weird. Rue also didn’t like them, so I threw them out. Or, more precisely, fed them to the house. It was very convenient not to need garbage bins.

After those two weeks, I had a detailed shopping list of all the ingredients I needed more of. Although I was sure I would find other great stuff in different worlds, I didn’t want to regret not stocking my favorites. The eggs in Lumis were also something else. They were double in size from the eggs on Earth and had a more pronounced taste—like the concentrated essence of an egg—and were terrific in baking. Before heading to the city, I changed my glamor and dressed in the local clothes, changed my class to Bard, and put on one of the storage rings to serve as a cover for my Storage. With my shopping list in hand, I left Rue on guard duty and flew to Crystalspire.

The city was buzzing with news about what happened to Marquess Damarion Fusil, and with some leading questions, I got a fuller picture. The day after the robbery, the lord went to see the king, claimed that some crazy wizard had robbed him, and demanded that the king storm the Wizard Spire. When the king refused, the lord lost his cool and shouted at the king. The king told his guards to throw him out of the palace and fined him five thousand gold for disrespecting the crown.

Most of his guards and mages left him since he no longer had their service contracts. With the remaining force, he tried to storm the Wizard Spire and had to retreat after they got severely singed. He tried to get his funds from The Golden Reliquary (it turned out to be what they call banks in Lumis), but since he didn’t have his deposit papers, they sent him packing. Right now, he was trying to sell his business but didn’t have the deed papers. He had to go before the king again to get alternative papers, but the king refused to see him before he paid his fine.

With a huge grin, I flew back home and decided to do some more mischief. While sitting on the house deck, I first took out all the papers I collected from the offices on the lower floors. Going through them was tedious. They were mostly financial reports, orders, memos, and other office management stuff. My core was glad for the meal, and hopefully in the future would do something interesting with all this paper. The next papers I checked were from the safe and were much more interesting.

All the stuff from the safe was blackmail material against other noble families. And, oh boy, those aristocrats were eager beavers. There were letters detailing illicit affairs, complete with timestamps and places, some even in their handwriting. A neatly tied stack of receipts exposed bribes paid to officials, disguised as “gifts” for services rendered. Then there were the contracts—secret agreements sealed behind closed doors—promising loyalty in exchange for land, titles, or even silence. One particularly damning document revealed a plot to overthrow the king, complete with a list of accomplices. It was like holding a who’s who of corruption, each piece more damning than the last. All the documents had lord Damarion’s name in some capacity, proving with no doubt that he was blackmailing all the bad kids.

After some deliberation, I packaged everything neatly, wrote a flowery letter about my supposed loyalty and allegiance to the king and country, flew to the royal palace, and dropped the package on the palace’s steps. I hovered above until the same Mage ran out like the last time and almost fell over my “gift.” Seeing that he found it, I flew back home.

The next papers I tackled were from his study. They mainly consisted of correspondence, orders, financial reports, and odds and ends. My core ate all of them.

The papers from his wife’s office were more interesting. Most of them were concerned with the running of the spire, servants, and provisions. But there was a thick stack of correspondence with her family, which was fascinating reading. It turned out that his wife was from a Viscount family. When they married, her family provided her with some businesses for financial independence, and their marriage agreement included this provision. Lord Damarion took the businesses and the marriage agreement from her, and took over everything. For the last twenty years, she begged her family to help her get them back, but they were afraid to go against a Marquess in general and this Marquess in particular.

It took me almost a week to review all those papers, and I was missing some. Where were the business deeds, the guard contracts, and her marriage agreement? I scanned all my storage again but found only some papers I took from the butlers’ offices, and they all had to do with running the spire. During my scan, I came across the safes. There were three of them. One from the master bedroom, one from the lord’s office, and one from the guards’ office.

The first one I tried to crack was from the guards’ office. The Protection shot me a few times with lightning, but I didn’t mind. What I did mind was that I couldn’t open it. It was a metal cube measuring about 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters, with no seams or other visible connections. It looks like a uniform cube cast from metal. Scanning it with my mana sense, I felt lumps of mana inside—probably runes—but after two days of concentrating on them with my mana sense, I still couldn’t decipher their shape. They were simply small lumps of mana. Finally, I told my core, “Absorb this cube, but return everything inside.”

The deck sucked in the cube, and I held my finger crossed that it would work. It did! The deck spit out a medium chest with gold and silver coins and papers. Here were all the guards’ contracts and some other odds and ends. Without even burping, the core devoured everything. The safe from the bedroom contained a lot of jewelry, a small chest of gold, and loose gems in three cloth pouches. The safe from the lord’s office was the jackpot. It held all the business deeds, his marriage agreement, the deposit papers, and more gold and loose gems.

After some deliberation, I decided I didn’t have beef with his wife. I collected all the deeds to the businesses she owned, the deposit papers, and her marriage agreement, packed them nicely, and flew to Crystalspire again. Now, the city was buzzing with the news of the Marquess’s arrest, along with some other noble families.

Oh, revenge is so nice sometimes.

It took me a while to discover the location of the Viscount Luthir spire. After I found it, I flew through an open window, located an empty office, dropped the package there, and felt that I had done my good deed for the day.

That left the business deeds, and when I leafed through them, I came across Adi’s name. That gave me an idea, but I didn’t want to do it only with Adi’s business to paint a target on him. I went through all the deeds and found the shittiest one. It was for a pig farm one town away from Crystalspire, and if I remembered correctly from the financial reports, it was losing money. To be on the safe side, I copied it to a fresh parchment with [Copy Text], circled lord Damarion’s name with a pen, placed it on the deck, and told the core, “Absorb the following document and return it without the circled name. Leave the place of the name blank.”

Well, I was glad I made a copy. I got back an empty parchment. I copied it repeatedly and tried various wordings, but nothing worked. Sometimes, I got an empty parchment; sometimes, it was half full of text, but not how I wanted it. I switched to manual handling. It took me two days to search my library for what I needed. I found a comprehensive book about removing various stains, and the method was rubbing alcohol or acetone on the ink carefully with a Q-Tip. It took me another two days to remove the lord’s name from all the deeds with a thin brush. The best way was to trace the ink with rubbing alcohol and then with acetone. The only deed I couldn’t handle like that was the one I copied with magic. It refused to behave like ink, and the text stayed stubbornly on the parchment. I was so glad I did my experiments on a shitty deed.

When the deeds were ready, I wrote the names of the stated managers as the owners. There was an extensive range of businesses: various shops, cafes, restaurants, workshops, a mill, three farms, and a skyrest. The only company I didn’t have a name to fill as an owner was the skyrest. That gave me an idea of how to pay a sort of debt. I knew the last name, but not the first name, so it was time to do some sleuthing in the city.

This time, the city was buzzing with news about a group of lord Damarion’s guards and mages who stumbled to the bazaar naked and covered in leaves and bruises and told some crazy story. Everybody, including the king’s guards, was sure they were lying or nuts. They claimed a wizard kidnapped them, held them captive in a dark dungeon, and then released them into the cursed forest. They stumbled there for over thirty days until another wizard found them and attacked them with force bursts, accusing them of spying. The second wizard chased them to the road leading to the bazaar. They stood before the king, and a Truth mage confirmed their story and released them. The city citizens couldn’t convince each other and were divided between believing they were nuts and thinking it was another of Marquess Damarion’s schemes. I agreed with both camps. I wanted to do a butt wiggle then and there, but refrained. Still, I did a mental butt wiggle.

My sleuthing revealed the full name of the owner of the Mana-Infused Bakery, Shosh Hamion. I wondered if it was the same Shosh that the crazy wizard accused of spying. When I returned home, I filled in the name on the deed and wrote him a brief note that the deed was compensation for the unpleasantness in the bakery. I didn’t know if he would be able to keep the skyrest, but that was his problem and not mine.

That night, I flew back to the city and, pushing my mana sense to the limit, placed the documents in each business. In most of them, I reached an office with my senses, but in some, I put the documents on the floor. In Adi’s store, I placed the document on the big sorting table with a bottle of perfume on top.

It looked like I could continue my travels in Lumis in peace. Still, I took another week to sort through everything I gathered at the spire. I fed all the servants’ furniture and the desks from the offices to my core. They were simple and cheap, and there was no reason to keep them. Other odds and ends ended in my core’s belly as well. Paintings of long-dead Marquesses, used tableware, old linen, broken and old furniture from the storage floors, etc. After all the spring cleaning, my Storage had some space, but not as much as I had hoped.

I went for another sleuthing session in the city. This time, I was looking for information about establishments that help people. I found information about two orphanages and a few temples that fed the poor. I visited each place at night and left big stacks of linen, tableware, cookware, simpler furniture, and clothes. This way, I cleared everything I couldn’t sell and gained more storage space. Unfortunately, I also heard that the king’s guard was looking for a wizard with an exceptionally enormous wolf.

Oh well, bye-bye, Lumis, after all.